Early Autumn At The Zoo Part II

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, my sister Susan and I went to the Denver Zoo this past Thursday afternoon and had a really nice time, even though some of the animals, such as the tigers and lions, were keeping a low profile. When we arrived, there was not a lion in sight on Predator Ridge, but as we were leaving, we went to the viewing window one more time, and happily, one of the 4 bachelor lions came out of his hiding place and posed for the photograph on the left. These 4 lions made national news a few years ago when Denver had a major blizzard, and they were filmed charging into the very high snow drifts side by side, in a made for Hollywood moment. I think they were offered a television series called Bachelor Lions, but rejected it due to a salary dispute.

The big news at the Denver Zoo these days is that there is both a new baby mandrill and a new baby orangutan. I went to the viewing window at the mandrill compound, and saw a number of people huddling in the far corner, oohing and aahing. I saw the female mandrill sitting in front of the window, but it wasn't until I got to the front, elbowing aside quite a few women and small children (my apologies), that I saw she was actually showing off her baby to zoo visitors, as seen in the  photograph on the right. Of course, taking a photo through a viewing window of animals in a dark corner has always been a pretty hard task, and so I had to do a lot of adjustments in Photoshop to make it reasonably presentable. But if that mother really was so proud of her baby, she should have looked directly into the camera instead of staring into space. Of course, you can't have everything go your way, I guess.

On the other hand, exactly nothing is what I got as far as the baby orangutan was concerned. I think the mother was in the back of the orangutan house, and never appeared when I was there. However, the male orangutan, the father of the new baby, was outside in the compound, just hanging around, as seen in the photograph on the left. This is the same orangutan who took over care of his previous baby when the mother unexpectedly died, which is a very rare thing indeed. From his photo, he looks like a very gentle creature, but the zoo refuses to let people into the compound to pet him, so we'll probably never know for sure

While waiting to see if that mother and her baby would make an appearance, which of course they never did, I took the photograph on the right of another orangutan that looks like it is in deep thought, most likely trying to figure out the meaning of life, at least as it pertains to orangutans. This looks to me like one very intelligent monkey. Or perhaps it is just wondering when dinner will be served, and if the new season of All Creatures Great and Small will be airing on PBS pretty soon.